Memories

SHOJI KAWAMORI

In the beginning, there was no Macross. No transforming spaceship. No idol singer. No love triangle, no alien warriors, no platinum-selling albums—none of them. There was just this seed of an idea: a non-transforming avian mecha with reversed legs that Kawamori and Miyatake dreamt up while watching crouched ski-jumpers on a ski trip.

Kawamori tells Miyatake this idea, and his mentor replies, "I was thinking the same thing, too!" (So is Lucasfilm an ocean away, but that's another story.) Unfortunately, their first sponsor rejects their "G Project" (G is for "ga walk" or "we walk") as too unorthodox. The creators regroup and sell their plan B of combining Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam: a transforming spaceship with transforming fighters, but no heroic bird walkers.

Months later, Takatoku Toys hands Kawamori their prototype toy of his variable fighter design. As fate would have it, the toy doesn't have locking joints yet, so its legs swings out and flops into his lap. "Ah! Did that just become a Ga-Walk?" It did, and the rest (or at least GERWALK) is history.